Stripdown of Elan Door

Lots of pictures again. My car must be one of the most documented elans
around 8-)

This is the first rev of the text, its sketchy, but i'm bored and its sunny
so I want to go drive!!

The door, you've seen it before I'm sure...

remove the two trims, they ought to be just stuck on with an adhesive for
the bottom material, peel it
off gently. You can remove just the areas around
the screw holes, seen in the detail below. The top
leather part is stuck on
with a rubber compound just pull it off. Clean up the excess rubber for later,
and put them somewhere safe.

this is a tricky little bugger, i took off the driver side fine, but i broke
the passenger lock cover, the idea is
that the orange part can be coerced into
popping out, this allows you to lift it off, its not that easy. take
your time
or order a new set 8-) I don't think you're really meant to get them off without
damage, but
it is possible.

The orange/red part is prone to breaking, hence lotus sells them in 10 packs,
part no. A100B6151H

here is is removed, and the reason you have to remove it, that screw

Screw No 10 x 5/8" part no A100W5191F

Door handle assy, in the top of the handle there's the end of the metal rod,
if you're
lucky it'll have moved up. Grab it with a pair of flat nosed pliers
and pull it out. the
handle will come off. I didn't bother with this part, this
time, you can get the plastic
trim off very easily without removing the handle.

After the trim is removed.

The plastic triangle at the window corner, its stuck on with a plastic velcro
like thing, just pull it off.

after removal.

the inside of the door hides another screw.

middle of the door, another bolt. Earlier Elans have a little plastic
triangle,
here as well. Don't lose it , its apparently about $100 8-)

close up of the bolts running along the bottom of the door.

close up of screws removed, on left side of handle, and you can see the two
others to remove on the
right hand side , note they have washers behind them,
watch out they don't fall as you remove the
bolts. A tip for when putting them
back on is to get some sticky glue to hold them, pritt stick works fine.

after the panel has been removed.

a close up of the speaker assy.

if you want to get inside the door panel, you need to remove the couple of
black plastic
panels which are held on by little pins, these need to be removed
by either pulling them
out or drilling them out with a small bit. tricky but not
to hard. These little fasteners are
called fastex scrivets. A100W6470F pack of
18, Carl Keil suggests pushing the pins
through the tap and then recovering them later, good idea..

Back of the speaker. remove the plastic, unclip the wire retainer and the 4
screws
at the front of the speaker, it'll pop out. Speakers went through a few
revisions so
yours might be different. The lotus speakers ore ok, i replaced one
side with the
equivalent Boston speaker , it didn't have anywhere near the level
of bass that
the lotus speaker had, but the high end was better.

Here is the top door insert after I've applied some black silicon adhesive
sealant,
put plenty on, wear gloves though its icky stuff. Of course you won't
have the problem I
did, which was when taking the picture I dropped it and
of course it landed on a light
colored carpet jam side down 8-). Make sure you remove all the
old silicon before
doing this and give it a clean with a light solvent.

Clean the target surface make sure its dry, and stick it in place, it takes
about 24 hours
for this stuff to set, but i found after an hour it'll hold its
own, if not you probably didn't
have enough on.. Be warned though this stuff stinks for a week or two, might be
advisable to crack the window a little, or drive with the top down for a while.

As for the lower trim, i used a spray fix adhesive that worked really well,
spray
it all over and apply it, takes a while to cure, and you might find
yourself sticking
it back on for a day or two,. but once it sets its fine, i
used it on the other door
about two months ago and its fine.

*DON'T* use a permanent adhesive, super glue, epoxy etc. you might want
to
get it off again later!

Thats it, I've stopped at actually removing the outer skin, It'll have to
come
off though as the power window broke 8-) but I'll probably let the dealer
do it,
its pretty involved I fear.